arXiv subjects

N. J. Upadhyay

Publications and source records attributed to N. J. Upadhyay.

16 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Non-Resonant Alpha-Induced Neutron-Emission: A Multi- Method Comparison Of Nuclear Reaction Rates

The precise calculation of alpha-induced neutron-emission ($α$,n) reaction rates is fundamental to understanding nucleosynthesis in diverse stellar environments. This study investigates the nuclear reaction rates for various non-resonant alpha-induced neutron-emission reactions by employing analytical, theoretical, and computational methods. We have adopted analytical expressions from existing literature, and for the computational approach, we have implemented the Monte Carlo method. To better understand the functionality and validate the established open-source Monte Carlo scripts, we also developed our own computational code and used it to test various aspects of the method. A comprehensive comparison of the reaction rates from each method is presented by plotting their dependency on temperature.

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arXiv2022

Manifestation of deformation and nonlocality in $α$ and cluster decay

It is common to study the strong decay of a heavy nucleus as a tunneling phenomenon where the $α$ ($^4$He) or a light nuclear cluster tunnels through the Coulomb barrier formed by its interaction with the heavier daughter nucleus. The position and width of the Coulomb barrier are determined by the total interaction potential between the two daughter nuclei. We examine the effects of including nonlocality and deformation in the interaction potential by calculating the half-lives, $t_{1/2}$, and thereby phenomenological preformation factors of several nuclei which have the possibility of decaying by emitting either an $α$ or a light nuclear cluster. The effect of deformation manifests itself by a decrease in $t_{1/2}$ for all the decays studied. The effect of nonlocality is studied within two different models of the nuclear potential: the energy-independent but angular momentum ($l$) dependent Mumbai (M) potential and the energy-dependent Perey-Buck (PB) potential. The nonlocal nuclear interaction leads to a decrease in all half-lives studied. Though the decrease is larger due to the Perey-Buck potential, half-lives evaluated using the Mumbai potential show a strong sensitivity to the $l$ value in the decay. This feature of the $α$ and cluster decay half-lives can provide a complementary tool in addition to scattering data which are more commonly used to fix the parameters of a nonlocal potential in literature.

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arXiv2019

Critical view of nonlocal nuclear potentials in alpha decay

Different models for the nonlocal description of the nuclear interaction are compared through a study of their effects on the half-lives of radioactive nuclei decaying by the emission of alpha particles. The half-lives are evaluated by considering a pre-formed alpha particle ($^4$He nucleus) which tunnels through the Coulomb barrier generated by its interaction with the daughter nucleus. An effective potential obtained from a density dependent double folding strong potential between the alpha and the daughter nucleus within the nonlocal framework is found to decrease the half-lives as compared to those in the absence of nonlocalities. Whereas the percentage decrease within the older Perey-Buck and São Paulo models ranges between 20 to 40\% for medium to heavy nuclei, a recently proposed effective potential leads to a decrease of only 2 - 4 \%. In view of these results, we provide a closer examination of the approximations used in deriving the local equivalent potentials and propose that apart from the scattering data, the alpha decay half-lives could be used as a complementary tool for constraining the nonlocality models.

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arXiv2018

Taylor approximation to treat nonlocality in scattering processes

Study of scattering process in the nonlocal interaction framework leads to an integro-differential equation. The purpose of the present work is to develop an efficient approach to solve this integro-differential equation with high degree of precision. The method developed here employs Taylor approximation for the radial wave function which converts the integro-differential equation in to a readily solvable second-order homogeneous differential equation. This scheme is found to be computationally efficient by a factor of 10 when compared to the iterative scheme developed in J.~Phys.~G~Nucl.~Part.~Phys.~{\bf 45},~015106~(2018). The calculated observables for neutron scattering off $^{24}$Mg, $^{40}$Ca, $^{100}$Mo and $^{208}$Pb with energies up to 10 MeV are found to be within at most 8$\%$ of those obtained with the iterative scheme. Further, we propose an improvement over the Taylor scheme that brings the observables so close to the results obtained by iterative scheme that they are visually indistinguishable. This is achieved without any appreciable change in the run time.

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arXiv2018

A new treatment of nonlocality in scattering process

Nonlocality in the scattering potential leads to an integro-differential equation.In this equation nonlocality enters through an integral over the nonlocal potential kernel. The resulting Schroedinger equation is usually handled by approximating r,r'-dependence of the nonlocal kernel. The present work proposes a novel method to solve the integro-differential equation. The method, using the mean value theorem of integral calculus, converts the nonhomogeneous term to a homogeneous term. The effective local potential in this equation turns out to be energy independent, but has relative angular momentum dependence. This method has high accuracy and is valid for any form of nonlocality. As illustrative examples, the total and differential cross sections for neutron scattering off 12C, 56Fe and 100Mo nuclei are calculated with this method in the low energy region (up to 10 MeV) and are found to be in good accord with the experiments.

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arXiv2013

Reactions of a Be-10 beam on proton and deuteron targets

The extraction of detailed nuclear structure information from transfer reactions requires reliable, well-normalized data as well as optical potentials and a theoretical framework demonstrated to work well in the relevant mass and beam energy ranges. It is rare that the theoretical ingredients can be tested well for exotic nuclei owing to the paucity of data. The halo nucleus Be-11 has been examined through the 10Be(d,p) reaction in inverse kinematics at equivalent deuteron energies of 12,15,18, and 21.4 MeV. Elastic scattering of Be-10 on protons was used to select optical potentials for the analysis of the transfer data. Additionally, data from the elastic and inelastic scattering of Be-10 on deuterons was used to fit optical potentials at the four measured energies. Transfers to the two bound states and the first resonance in Be-11 were analyzed using the Finite Range ADiabatic Wave Approximation (FR-ADWA). Consistent values of the spectroscopic factor of both the ground and first excited states were extracted from the four measurements, with average values of 0.71(5) and 0.62(4) respectively. The calculations for transfer to the first resonance were found to be sensitive to the size of the energy bin used and therefore could not be used to extract a spectroscopic factor.

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arXiv2013

Separable Representation of Phenomenological Optical Potentials of Woods-Saxon Type

Background: One important ingredient for many applications of nuclear physics to astrophysics, nuclear energy, and stockpile stewardship are cross sections for reactions of neutrons with rare isotopes. Since direct measurements are often not feasible, indirect methods, e.g. (d,p) reactions, should be used.} Those (d,p) reactions may be viewed as three-body reactions and described with Faddeev techniques. Purpose: Faddeev equations in momentum space have a long tradition of utilizing separable interactions in order to arrive at sets of coupled integral equations in one variable. While there exist several separable representations for the nucleon-nucleon interaction, the optical potential between a neutron (proton) and a nucleus is not readily available in separable form. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a separable representation for complex phenomenological optical potentials of Woods-Saxon type. Results: Starting from a global optical potential, a separable representation thereof is introduced based on the Ernst-Shakin-Thaler (EST) scheme. This scheme is generalized to non-hermitian potentials. Applications to n$+^{48}$Ca, n$+^{132}$Sn and n$+^{208}$Pb are investigated for energies from 0 to 50 MeV and the quality of the representation is examined. Conclusions: We find a good description of the on-shell t-matrix for all systems with rank up to 5. The required rank depends inversely on the angular momentum. The resulting separable interaction exhibits a different off-shell behavior compared to the original potential, reducing the high momentum contributions.

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arXiv2013

Interaction of eta mesons with nuclei

Back in the mid eighties, a new branch of investigation which was related to the interaction of eta mesons with nuclei came into existence. It started with the theoretical prediction of possible exotic states of eta mesons and nuclei bound by the strong interaction and later developed into an extensive experimental program to search for such unstable states as well as understand the underlying interaction via eta meson producing reactions. The vast literature of experimental as well as theoretical works which studied various aspects of eta producing reactions such as the $π^+$ $n$ $\to ηp$, $p d \to ^3$He $η$, $p \,^6$Li $\to ^7$Be $η$ and $γ^3$He $\to η$ X, to name a few, had but one objective in mind: to understand the eta - nucleon ($ηN$) and hence the $η$-nucleus interaction which could explain the production data and confirm the existence of some $η$-mesic nuclei. In spite of these efforts, there remain uncertainties in the knowledge of the $ηN$ and hence the $η$-nucleus interaction. The present review is hence an attempt to bind together the findings in these works and draw some global and specific conclusions which can be useful for future explorations.

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arXiv2012

Status of reaction theory for studying rare isotopes

Reactions are an important tool to study nuclear structure and for extracting reactions relevant for astrophysics. In this paper we focus on deuteron induced reactions which can provide information on neutron shell evolution as well as neutron capture cross sections. We review recent work on the systematic comparison of the continuum discretized coupled channel method, the adiabatic wave approximation and the Faddeev momentum-space approach. We also explore other aspects of the reaction mechanism and discuss in detail difficulties encountered in the calculations.

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arXiv2011

Testing the continuum discretized coupled channel method for deuteron induced reactions

The Continuum Discretized Coupled Channels (CDCC) method is a well established theory for direct nuclear reactions which includes breakup to all orders. Alternatively, the 3-body problem can be solved exactly within the Faddeev formalism which explicitly includes breakup and transfer channels to all orders. With the aim to understand how CDCC compares with the exact 3-body Faddeev formulation, we study deuteron induced reactions on: i) $^{10}$Be at $E_{\rm d}= 21.4, 40.9 \; {\rm and} \; 71$ MeV; ii) $^{12}$C at $E_{\rm d} = 12 \; {\rm and} \; 56$ MeV; and iii) $^{48}$Ca at $E_{\rm d} = 56$ MeV. We calculate elastic, transfer and breakup cross sections. Overall, the discrepancies found for elastic scattering are small with the exception of very backward angles. For transfer cross sections at low energy $\sim$10 MeV/u, CDCC is in good agreement with the Faddeev-type results and the discrepancy increases with beam energy. On the contrary, breakup observables obtained with CDCC are in good agreement with Faddeev-type results for all but the lower energies considered here.

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arXiv2011

Are present reaction theories for studying rare isotopes good enough?

Rare isotopes are most often studied through nuclear reactions. Nuclear reactions can be used to obtain detailed structure information but also in connection to astrophysics to determine specific capture rates. In order to extract the desired information it is crucial to have a reliable framework that describes the reaction process accurately. A few recent developments for transfer and breakup reactions will be presented. These include recent studies on the reliability of existing theories as well as effort to reduce the ambiguities in the predicted observables.

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arXiv2010

Study of $K^-$ absorption at rest in nuclei followed by $p Λ$ emission

$p\,Λ$ emission in coincidence following $K^-$ absorption at rest in nuclei is studied using quantum mechanical scattering theory and nuclear wave functions. $K^-$ absorption is assumed to occur on two protons in the nucleus. In the formalism, emphasis is put on the study of the final state interaction (FSI) effects of $p$ and $Λ$ with the recoiling nucleus. We include elastic scattering and single nucleon knock-out (KO) channels in the FSI. Calculations are presented for the $^{12}$C nucleus, using shell model wave functions, and without any extra mass modification of the $K^-\,pp$ system in the nucleus. Calculated results are presented for the angular correlation distribution between $p$ and $Λ$, their invariant mass distribution and the momentum spectra of $p$ and $Λ$. These results are compared with the corresponding experimental measurements \cite{agnello}. With only elastic scattering FSI included, the angular correlation distribution and the momentum spectra are found to be in good accord with the corresponding measurements. With full FSI the calculated $p\,Λ$ invariant mass distribution is found to have two peaks, one corresponding to the elastic scattering FSI and another to single nucleon KO FSI. The KO peak agrees fully, in position and shape, with the peak observed in Ref. \cite{agnello}. The peak corresponding to elastic scattering FSI does not seem to exist in the measured distribution. Considering that such a two peak structure is always seen in the inclusive ($p$, $p^\prime $) and ($e$, $e^\prime $) reactions in nuclei at intermediate energies, absence of the elastic scattering peak in the $p\,Λ$ reaction is intriguing.

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arXiv2009

Pairwise final state interactions in the p d --> p d eta reaction near threshold

A model for the p d --> p d eta reaction published earlier, including the final state interaction (FSI) of all particles, is revisited to investigate the low energy data on this reaction. The three body problem of p-d-eta scattering in the final state is approximated in terms of pairwise interactions between the three particles in the final state. Apart from a comparison with some preliminary data, two new findings relevant to the near threshold data analysis are reported. The first one points toward the limitations of an FSI factor used conventionally to extract the eta-deuteron scattering length and infer subsequently on the existence of eta-mesic states. The second result emphasizes the role of the $p-d$ FSI and the strong Coulomb repulsion near threshold. Finally, a comparison of the above model calculation with low energy data, excludes very large eta-nucleon scattering lengths.

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arXiv2009

Eta meson rescattering effects in the p + 6Li --> eta + 7Be reaction near threshold

The p + 6Li --> eta + 7Be reaction has been investigated with an emphasis on the eta meson and 7Be interaction in the final state. Considering the 6Li and 7Be nuclei to be alpha-d and alpha-3He clusters respectively, the reaction is modelled to proceed via the p + d [alpha] --> 3He [α] + eta reaction with the alpha remaining a spectator. The eta meson interacts with 7Be via multiple scatterings on the 3He and alpha clusters inside 7Be. The individual eta-3He and eta-alpha scatterings are evaluated using few body equations for the eta-3N and eta-4N systems with a coupled channel eta-N interaction as an input. Calculations including four low-lying states of 7Be lead to a double hump structure in the total cross section corresponding to the $L = 1 (J = (1/2)^-, (3/2)^-)$ and $L = 3 (J = (5/2)^-, (7/2)^-)$ angular momentum states. The humps arise due to the off-shell rescattering of the eta meson on the 7Be nucleus in the final state.

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arXiv2008

Study of the $η-^7Be$ Interaction Near Threshold in $p-^6Li$ Fusion

We present a calculation for $η$ production in the $p-^6Li$ fusion near threshold including the $η-^7Be$ final state interaction (FSI). We consider the $^6Li$ and $^7Be$ nuclei as $α-d$ and $α-^3He$ clusters respectively. The calculations are done for the lowest states of $^7Be$ with $J = ({3\over2}^-, {1\over2}^-)$ resulting from the $L = $1 radial wave function. The $η-^7Be$ interaction is incorporated through the $η-^7Be$ $T-$matrix, constructed from the medium modified matrices for the $η-^3He$ and $η-α$ systems. These medium modified matrices are obtained by solving few body equations, where the scattering in nuclear medium is taken into account.

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arXiv2007

A study of the $p d \to p d η$ reaction

A study of the $p d \to p d η$ reaction in the energy range where the recent data from Uppsala are available, is done in the two-step model of $η$ production including the final state interaction. The $η-d$ final state interaction is incorporated through the solution of the Lippmann Schwinger equation using an elastic scattering matrix element, $T_{ηd \to ηd}$, which is required to be half off-shell. It is written in a factorized form, with an off-shell form factor multiplying an on-shell part given by an effective range expansion up to the fourth power in momentum. The parameters of this expansion have been taken from an existing recent relativistic Faddeev equation solution for the $ηNN$ system corresponding to different $η-N$ scattering amplitudes. Calculations have also been done using few body equations within a finite rank approximation (FRA) to generate $T_{ηd \to ηd}$. The $p-d$ final state interaction is included in the spirit of the Watson-Migdal prescription by multiplying the matrix element by the inverse of the Jost function. The $η-d$ interaction is found to be dominant in the region of small invariant $η-d$ mass, $M_{ηd}$. The $p-d$ interaction enhances the cross section in the whole region of $M_{ηd}$, but is larger for large $M_{ηd}$. We find nearly isotropic angular distributions of the proton and the deuteron in the final state. All the above observations are in agreement with data. The production mechanism for the entire range of the existing data on the $p d \to p d η$ reaction seems to be dominated by the two-step model of $η$ production.

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